


Casualty

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: War Stories (2003)
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, M/M, The Sad Gay Journalist Trilogy Is Complete, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25972099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Ben doesn't do relationships, until he does. When he does, they don't last.
Relationships: Ben Dansmore/Ed O'Brian, Ben Dansmore/Paul (War Stories)
Collections: Jeff Goldblum Cinematic Universe (JGCU)





	Casualty

**Author's Note:**

> Okay look, I know, no one has seen this 2003 made-for-TV movie, but I actually really enjoyed it except for the weird unnecessary heterosexuality. So I wrote the messy gay version my heart wanted.

They met halfway across the world. O’Brian was flying solo at barely twenty, a dictaphone in one sweaty hand and a camera around his neck. Ben had been about the same age, had been attached to a seasoned photojournalist, a hell of a way to learn the trade, watching a war he couldn’t remember not being in implode all around them. 

His first partner had been… _almost_ Ben’s type, tragically heterosexual even a world away from the comforts of home and the girl next door. Older, sure, but if he’d been amenable, he wasn’t too old. But he wasn’t, and that wound up being fine, because O’Brian was, and O’Brian…

Tall, lean, shaggy blond hair and a perpetually-pink face-- pink and shining, the humidity clawing at them both as they would lay around in the long stretches between the awful bursts of activity, too hot and shell-shocked to fill their spare time with anything useful, too raw… They gravitated to each other, same as any two boys might, they were still boys. Putting their lives on the line to see their names in print, to go from internship to the life of a real reporter and damn the cost. Young enough to feel like somehow they were going to live forever, even if so many other boys their age weren’t.

O’Brian was young, but he’d had a deep, resonant voice, the kind that could be commanding if he wasn’t quite so whiny, if it wasn’t for that soft lisp and that ineffectual sneer. Promising, Ben had thought-- if the two of them got the chance to grow up for real, the man he’d be… The man he’d be if they both survived the mess they’d been so ill-prepared for.

He was an asshole, but then, so was Ben. 

He had a squared off jaw with a strong chin, good hands. Long legs, nice abs. They’d slept in cots, under swathes of netting, it lent a certain dreaminess to the picture he made, thin shorts and lean, muscular thighs, and his sweat-soaked tee shirt pushed halfway up his chest, his body flushed and glistening… 

Back home, there were things Ben didn’t do. Here? 

He thought that when the tension boiled over, it would be hard and fast, they would be rough with each other, but it hadn’t been that way at all. It was the end of a long, tense night. They’d been alone for once, had been eying each other up from across the room, and then something broke, but it broke soft.

A bucket of water, a single washcloth. They’d wiped the sweat from each other’s bodies, there had been a care and a focus behind each lingering touch. They’d looked into each other’s eyes, O’Brian’s were blue. There was an honesty in their desperate inexperience which words would have shamed. 

They didn’t talk about it, any of the times that it happened. But it happened. It kept happening.

In O’Brian’s hotel room, the night before flying home, they’d had their last time, or they’d thought it would be. But after Vietnam came Laos, and after Laos came Lebanon, and Thailand, and Libya, and that marked ten, eleven years of finding each other in hell and falling into bed together. Walking away when it was over like it meant nothing. Casual.

And then it was Serbia, and he and Ed O’Brian had been _something_ to each other for twenty-four years that they were only allowed to be in war zones. Something sometimes-caustic sometimes-tender, something complicated and messy and the simplest thing in the world, the simplest thing in Ben’s life. 

Not something exclusive, even in a war zone. But something.

They were in Novi Sad, the world shaking down around them, warm but not drunk on rakija, Ed’s arms around him as he fucked into him, a steady, slow rhythm they’d abandon before long, but it was always part of the fun, to see who would lose it first, who’d need more, who would break and _ask_ for it. Of all the stupid things they could be competitive over, this one was the most fun. 

“We could go out like this, you know.” Ed said, frank even then, gaze still lucid and focused, and Ben was going to make his eyes roll back in his head, sure, but somehow he didn’t mind the conversation… 

Kissing him tasted like plum brandy and walnut cookies and small comforts. 

Which might have been disgusting, if he had lived a life of greater comforts.

“There are worse ways to go.”

“Uh-huh.” He grinned up at Ben, and for a moment he was that twenty year old boy again with the shaggy hair and perfect thighs, the first boy he ever… “If you ask me ‘did the earth move for you, too, sweetheart’ after, I’m going to sock you.”

“If the building doesn’t come down on us, I reserve the right to say whatever stupid shit I want. And you don’t want to know what you’ll get if you sock me.”

“Yeah I do.” Ed moved to meet him, let out a soft little _noise_ as Ben hit home just that little bit deeper, that little bit harder. “What’ll you do? You gonna get mad?”

“No.” He bit at his throat just a little sharper than he might have. 

“Shove me? Smack me?”

Ben stopped mid-thrust to look down at him, to see something dizzied there. Not like they never played rough-- half the time they did. 

“Sure.” He kissed him again, soft. “Put my hands around your throat, drag you over my knee, anything you want.”

“I want you to leave your mark on me. When it’s over, I want to remember we were alive.”

This thing they had wasn’t always healthy, maybe it never was, but this is what they gave each other-- when it was all over, when they went home and learned how to live without bombs dropping, they’d remember being alive, too. As alive as a person can get, in the middle of it all, connected to someone. Maybe joking and maybe fighting and maybe fucking and maybe all three. Maybe drinking. Sharing the kind of secrets they couldn’t share back home with normal people.

Twenty-four years of memories, twenty-four years of war, twenty-four years of something else where no rules applied and no fouls were called. 

He’d brought plum brandy not because it was the easiest thing to find, though it was easy, but because he remembered sharing a drink years ago, stray thoughts and confessions, the weight of knowing somehow Ed had begun to associate Ben with plums, that it had been a misfire of memory at first before they’d ever shared anything plummy, but once he knew he couldn’t help himself. If they crawled into the same space bearing food and booze, to hole up for a while and simultaneously pretend that their relationship was more and less than fucking, well…

There had been plum wine and plum cake and plum preserves on hard brown bread and plum brandy and the heady and intoxicating idea that on a peaceful summer day back home somewhere green, Ed O’Brian would bite into a plum and think suddenly and strongly of Ben, just for a second. 

It didn’t need to mean anything to him, just that he’d _remember_. 

It was only fair. He remembered Ed by the brand of gum he chewed and the scent of his aftershave. He remembered things about Ed he’d never intended to learn about anyone. He remembered the borrowed mix tape that had been playing twenty-four years ago, that the Doors’ Touch Me was playing the first time he sucked Ed off. 

It was a good night. The sex, the fact that they didn’t die. Not being alone. They didn’t see each other after that for a year, a year and a half, though, and by the time they spotted each other in Afghanistan, things had changed. 

“It’s been a while.” Ed greeted him. Not overly warm, out in the hotel lobby with others around. But he’d lingered close while Ben had checked in, and he hadn’t been put off by Ben’s lukewarm reply, because lukewarm was normal, because they were discrete. Because they were casual.

“Maybe we should talk.” Ben said, checking to make sure they’d go unnoticed, undisturbed, if they drifted off together, and his tone was careful, but then, his tone was always careful.

“Maybe we should.” And so he kept up with Ben, strides perfectly matched, as they left the lobby and grabbed an elevator. Ed’s eyes flickered over his reflection in the elevator door, and Ben leaned forward to press the button. 

“What floor?”

“Yours is fine.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen you since they airlifted me out of Kosovo. How’s business?”

“Good, good. Better than ever. You?”

“Oh, you know. I’m here.” He chuckled. “Still playing the old drinking game--”

“Take a shot every time you feel residual guilt over the way the military-industrial complex is keeping us employed for life.” Ben smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah, I remember that one.”

“It’s good to see you, Ben.”

That was when the realization hit him, that they weren’t on the same page, that Ed had mistaken his coolness for caution. And that perhaps he had depths Ben had not imagined, feelings Ben had imagined they were incapable of developing for each other. Feelings he’s assumed Ed didn’t _want_ , for a man in general or maybe just for Ben in particular. They’d never been… they’d never been like that about each other. They could be tender, just as two human beings, but never romantic.

“We should talk.”

“Oh, you were serious about talking.” Ed’s eyebrows moved upwards, but he carried no real tension following Ben into his room. “What’s up?”

“That thing we did, we can’t.”

“Yeah? What, you catch something?”

“I’m with someone now. It’s serious. So… Not that it isn’t always a good time, but I’m…”

“Right. Right.” He shook his head, held up a hand. “You don’t want to be that guy. Hey, I’ll scope my options, we’re not the only ones at the hotel, no, no hard feelings.”

“Right. We were never exclusive. Frees you up to, to, you know, whatever you want. Men, women, groups, world’s your, uh, your oyster, so…”

“Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m… I’m kind of done pretending women ever did it for me, but yeah. Lot of fish in the sea.”

“So have a good war.”

“Sure. Hey… and-- you know, um… good for you. Settling down. Never thought I’d see the day, but congratulations. I’m no sore loser, pal.” He gave an unconvincing laugh. “What’s her name?”

“Paul.” Ben swallowed, looking away. “Paul.”

“Paul.”

Even trying not to look at Ed then, the change in things was impossible to ignore. 

“Paul?”

“What I said.” He shrugged. 

“You take Paul back to _Allentown_? Paul meet your parents?”

“Nobody knows. Except for you. Nobody-- Christ, I could never introduce Paul to my family. You know--”

“Oh, sure, I know. I know you don’t do anything serious with guys and what happens in foreign countries stays in foreign countries, I know! Does Paul know? He’s fine with never holding your hand on the street?”

“For now we want the same things. Paul’s… uncomplicated.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize your dick in my ass was too complicated for you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” Ed let out a hollow chuckle. “Sure I do. Tell Paul good luck from me. I hope he gets a lot of mileage out of your dick, it sure is your best feature.”

“And here I, uh, thought you were a tit man.”

“Shut up, Ben.” He shook his head, stormed out the door. Which was maybe as good as Ben could have hoped for, but it wasn’t what he’d hoped for. It wasn’t what he’d expected. They were never supposed to be so important to each other. Before he could follow to the door, it was swinging open again, Ed storming right back in to jab an accusing finger his way. “You ruined plums for me! Fuck you!”

“You brought the plums into things, I didn’t make the plums something, maybe, maybe you ruined plums!”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, I didn’t ruin shit for you, or you’d-- I’ve never ruined anything for you.” His shoulders fell. “You know we’ve been fucking each other longer than we haven’t, at this point? And I haven’t ruined a damn thing for you.”

“It was just sex.”

“No-- no, you-- We weren’t exclusive, that’s not the same as ‘just sex’. I told you about Paro! You think I was proud of everything I did when I was young and hungry? You think I tell everyone about that job? I’m not going to cry, or claim I wasted the best years of my life on you, or anything stupid like that, but don’t you say it was just sex like we didn’t spend nights together wondering if we were going to see the morning, like we didn’t ever lean on each other when we needed something other than a quick fuck, like we didn’t tell each other things or ask each other for things. I mean maybe we didn’t ask a lot, maybe we never had a real relationship, but don’t tell me we were just sex. Because we’ve known each other, Ben. We’ve known each other a long time. Break things off for something serious, fine, but don’t lie to me about what we’ve been, because hell… we’ve been something. Maybe there’s not a word for what we were, we weren’t lovers, we weren’t friends. Not really. But ‘just sex’? No. No, fuck you, pal, if you want to tell me that’s all we ever meant to each other.”

“Whatever we were, it-- You don’t get to be mad it’s over, when I always said--”

“You’re not even listening to me, it’s not about whether it’s over. Believe it or not, I can get just sex anywhere, that’s not what I’m mad about, I’m mad about _Paul_ getting to be a real relationship when you always said you didn’t get serious about men. _A quarter of a century_ of you not being able to get serious about a man and accepting that about you, if you told me we couldn’t fuck because you were settling down with a woman, we just wouldn’t fuck. We’d be fine. You telling me we’re nothing at all to each other and you’re with some guy who’s not ‘complicated’, as if I ever asked you for anything complicated, how am I supposed to take that? It’s fucking different.”

“Work made things complicated, with us!” Ben shouted back, spreading his arms. Why couldn’t Ed _get_ that? Work was always going to make things complicated, they couldn’t mean anything to each other, there could be no real, lasting alliances. 

“And it doesn’t, with _Paul_?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“He understand what you do?”

“He does.”

“He seen you cry?”

“He will.” Ben nodded. That seemed to satisfy something, at least, seemed to take the fight out of Ed.

Ed, who’s held him before, while they both cried, because they were twenty years old and there were bullets flying and they were lying in the mud questioning everything they’d ever done to lead them here, missing the draft only to voluntarily head into a war zone armed with nothing. There, amidst the terror and homesickness, Ben had discovered a _calling_ , a deep-seated need to find and speak truth. At times he’d thought it was a thing they had in common, other times he’d thought maybe Ed O’Brian just wanted to make a name for himself and he’d put his life on the line to do it. For the first time, he wondered if Ed had ever understood or considered what drove _him_.

He wanted the answer to be yes. He wanted the answer to be no.

“Well, like I said, good luck to him. I hope you’re right, I hope he can handle…” He waved a hand. “Have a good war.”

They avoided each other for the rest of the assignment. The next time they saw each other they were stateside for once and not on opposite coasts-- and maybe he could have expected to see O’Brian at the EIJ, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t considered the possibility until they were on an elevator together.

“How’s things?” O’Brian asked, his voice professionally dispassionate, or nearly so.

“Good, good. Things are, uh, going. How are your… things? How are you doing?”

“The same. Fine.”

They used to talk… why had he told himself they weren’t friends? Because they worked for different papers? Because sometimes they fought? Ben didn’t think he had friends he didn’t argue with, it didn’t mean anything. He’d tried not thinking about O’Brian, after the last time, tried not to wonder if he’d hurt him in any deep or meaningful way, tried not to ask himself if he regretted things. Things with Paul were good, things with Paul were steady. Things with Paul _were_ , at work or at home. He loved Paul, it didn’t help to wonder if he’d ever loved O’Brian too. 

There was no avoiding him over the conference. It was all right, for a while, they were civil for a while. Ben let a couple of snide comments go over lunch. It wasn’t until O’Brian impugned his journalistic integrity, heading down a corridor, that Ben snapped.

“I don’t know where you get off, but my record is, is sterling, okay? I mean, if you want to talk about, uh, uh, the _truth_ \--”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the _ass_ , buddy--”

“Bhutan!” He held up a finger. “That, that _fairy tale_ you logged from Bhutan, you remember that?”

“I told you that in confidence!” Ed smacked a hand into his chest, his face red, and so Ben grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him back into the wall. “You want to hit me? Huh, big man, you wanna go?”

“Jesus.” Ben let go, took a half step back and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “No-- no, god, I’m sorry.”

The last time a fight got physical, their faces not even an inch apart, they’d wound up rutting like animals, rolling around on the floor of O’Brian’s hotel room, they’d torn at each other’s clothes, traded biting kisses and biting insults. They’d been, what, in their twenties? Not halfway through them. 

“Ben, wait--”

O’Brian caught him by the wrist, then let go as if shocked by what he’d done. Ben had shoved him into the wall and _he_ was shocked by himself.

“I should--” Ben pulled back, but not hard and not far. Wasn’t sure what he felt when O’Brian simply let go.

“I started it. You don’t-- _I’m_ sorry.”

“I should go.”

He couldn’t think about it, he couldn’t think about what he’d done or almost done, and what they’d done once upon a time. Wasn’t it proof enough they were no good together? Wasn’t it proof that breaking things off was the right decision? He and Paul could bicker, sure, but they never threw each other around.

He was still shaken by the time he made it to his room-- their room-- where he let Paul rub his shoulders, where he didn’t tell Paul what had rattled him. Paul knew how to tease him out of a bad mood. Some lighthearted ribbing, ice cream from room service, making love sweet and slow… enough to forget about the altercation, until the following afternoon when he saw O’Brian again, caught his eye and remembered it all at once, the loss of control, the heat.

Was it reproach in his eyes, warning? Want? From across the room, Ben couldn’t be sure. All he could do was his best to avoid O’Brian, to stick closer to Paul when possible. Paul knew how to keep him out of trouble… and sometimes how to get him into it. But whatever bad blood Ben had with O’Brian, however much of it came out of his breaking things off, O’Brian never had any problem with Paul himself. If they ran into each other, they were friendly enough-- in front of Paul, O’Brian was less likely to start a fight with Ben and more likely to ignore him, to be just civil enough. But he got along with Paul just fine.

Paul knew, Paul knew about anyone they might run into through work who Ben had slept with casually, Ben knew a few people Paul had slept with casually. They had a name or two in common. It wasn’t a big deal, it was all in the past, but he thought if he told Paul about the way he’d fought with O’Brian, breaking things off, Paul wouldn’t quite believe him. He’d wind his arms around Ben’s neck and kiss him and laugh, he’d say of course he thought Ben was worth fighting for, but O’Brian was hardly the jealous type, whatever they’d had couldn’t have been so heated. 

It was easier not to say anything about the relationship, the non-relationship, except that they used to sleep together, if they were in the same place. That they had never been exclusive.

And the conference ended, and the world turned, and the job stayed the same, and he and Paul traveled together doing it. He put O’Brian out of his head again, except for a whisper of relief in the back of his head when he didn’t spot him in a crowd of fellow correspondents. 

Paul was his future. He was so sure of it, Paul was his future. Had to be. He could never introduce Paul to his family, they couldn’t get married, but he’d changed his will, made Paul the sole executor of his estate, included a couple instructions on things certain people in his life might want for sentimental reasons and figured Paul could decide on the rest. Paul could decide what to do with him-- just as well, because his family would probably fight about it. His mother didn’t like that he wanted to donate himself to whoever would carve him up and take him, if anyone would. He thought Paul would understand. They never talked about what they’d do after, if one of them died… if it was just one of them, without the other. 

Usually, it felt like they’d go together. 

It felt that way huddling in his room, bombs landing not miles from their hotel.

“We should get drunk and fuck.” He suggested. “Old times’ sake?”

“We’ve got old times now?” Paul laughed in spite of it all, curled in against him.

It hit Ben only then, that the memory he’d superimposed Paul over had been a night spent with Ed O’Brian. Not long before he and Paul became partners, but it was before. It was Ed O’Brian he had faced the prospect of death with, had fucked into and been teased by… gotten not-nearly-tipsy-enough with, weak brandy he’d brought over, and O’Brian had brought out cookies, like it was a social call, like they weren’t just meeting up to fuck, to take their minds off of the possibility that the night might be their last. Like it was… like _they_ were…

Despite the long history he and Ed O’Brian had had, he normally didn’t think about nights spent with Ed when Paul was with him. It was upsetting to find himself making the mistake then, listening to explosions in the distance, sometimes near enough the window would rattle, flashes of light through the curtains and the blinds. 

“If we don’t get any older than we are right now, I’m counting the times we’ve had as old ones.” He said. Not a lie. Not only. “And if we do… how do you want to remember tonight, huh?”

“That’s a good point.” Paul smiled, and things were easy. Things were good and things were easy. 

They made it through hard days, long nights, watched skyscapes of smoke and fire, saw scarred fields and cities new in ruin. They survived all of it, and they had each other to cling to.

And then, pinned down by gunfire with the future uncertain, Ben had reached for Paul, meaning to comfort, and Paul had turned to him with an aching sorrow behind his eyes. 

“Honey, we’re going to get through this.” Ben promised, not that he could know. And yet hadn’t they so far? Any day could be their last, but hadn’t they come through so far? “Just keep, just-- here, come here, baby, come here. Stay down.”

“Ben, I have to tell you something.”

“Honey, get _down_ , here-- here.”

Paul didn’t protest not being able to get the shot, as Ben drew him close, crowded him to the wall and crouched over him, curled around him. He tried to breathe in the scent of him against the gunfire and death in the air. He tried to hold onto the thought that he could shield him as bits of rubble showered them from the building behind..

“Ben--”

“Shh, tell me tonight. Over drinks. We’ll-- you can tell me later.”

“It’s important.”

“... Okay.” He nodded, meeting Paul’s eyes. So they were going to do this. They were going to get sappy, they were going to…

He wasn’t sure. Talk about all the ‘if one of us dies’ crap they’d always found a way of putting off, say ‘I love you’, cry. Maybe Paul would ask him to settle down, to do something less dangerous with the rest of their lives, have a commitment ceremony, get a dog or a kid or something really crazy.

“I slept with Gayle.” 

“Yeah, so have I.”

“No, I mean-- Recently.”

Ben could have been shot, then, and not noticed. 

“What?” He croaked. “What’s ‘recently’?”

“I’ve been-- It was-- Look, you and I… we didn’t start out to be serious, but it was… _convenient_ , to be more or less exclusive from the start. We were spending ninety percent of our time together, neither of us intended to wind up where we are, and--”

Another rocket hit nearby, Ben’s ears were ringing with it. Paul gave up on trying to explain, then. Until they were back at the hotel in one piece and Paul reached out to touch his arm only for Ben to shake him off.

“I am so sorry, baby.”

“Sorry.” Ben just stared at him. “You’re sorry. Well, that’s, uh, that’s fine then, if you’re sorry. You slept with Gayle! Recently!”

“It happened, yeah. And I don’t want to lie to you about that--”

“Sorry, how, how recently? Or have you been lying to me about it but almost getting shot has you reevaluating what kind of, kind of person you are?”

“We were… together. Long enough to know it was serious. You were writing and I was down in the hotel bar. She asked where you were, I said you were busy, she… she made it clear I was her second choice for the night. She was someone we’d both been with and it seemed harmless. We used protection, it didn’t mean anything to either of us, I was… not drunk enough, to excuse anything that happened that night. But I was so used to thinking of us as just one of those things that happened, and-- we never really had the big talk about-- Ben…”

“I don’t really want to talk about this right now.” He said, voice feeling thick in his throat. 

“Do you want me to go?”

So help him, he didn’t. After how close they both came, after the day they’d had, he needed not to be alone, he needed _Paul_. Love wasn’t some light switch he could just turn off because he’d been hurt, and even if it was, he still felt shaky, he still smelled like a warzone, he still heard the echoing of heavy fire in the back of his head. He didn’t want Paul to go, he wanted to be held.

So they showered together, though not with the tenderness he might have offered. They went to bed together. They had sex, because few things helped quite so much with the need to feel all right again after a brush with death, except this time he ached thinking about Paul giving this to Gayle. Paul keeping quiet about it… what? Did it hit him all at once that he’d cheated, or did it dawn on him slowly that they were past the point of casual sex with other people? What triggered the realization? Coming back to the room and seeing their things all thrown together? Was it taking turns over the sink in the morning, the intimate dance of shared space, the familiarity of their half-dressed bodies, of seeing each other shaving, brushing teeth, applying deodorant? Or did it hit him back home, when they went home to one apartment and one bed, when they ate breakfast together at their little table and slowly adjusted to ordinary life together?

The infidelity didn’t break them up, but it changed things. The playful sniping sometimes turned mean, layered with hurt. Paul went from avoiding conflict knowing that he couldn’t win any argument when ‘you cheated’ was locked and loaded on Ben’s side, to seeking it out just as often, asking when he’d get past it, how long he intended to hold it against him. They couldn’t afford to live on another couple’s timetable, their lives were accelerated. He wanted forgiveness in a matter of weeks, and the worst part was, Ben got it. He did. There was no telling, on the job, there were no guarantees. Paul hadn’t wanted to die carrying the secret of his infidelity, but he didn’t want to die unforgiven for it, either, if they could just do what they always did and move forward at their own breakneck pace.

They had their good times. They needed each other and they were there, they gave comfort, they shared things… but it still changed things, to have that sitting there. To know it had happened. To wonder, even when Paul swore it would never, could never happen again. 

They didn’t talk about the fact that they’d both changed their wills, they didn’t settle down or get a dog. They went right back into it.

They were going to get through it, even if it wasn’t easy, even if sometimes it was ugly. He was going to forgive Paul, because he couldn’t stop loving him, and it was only fair that it was hard but they were going to be okay.

They were going to be okay, right up until the mine.

O’Brian came to Paul’s funeral. Ben thought he should have been upset, seeing him, but he wasn’t. After, he approached him, pulled him aside.

“Thank you. For coming.”

“I didn’t come for you.” O’Brian said, a little cold but not nasty, not like they could get with each other. “I came to pay my respects to Paul.”

“I can’t thank you for that?”

“Paul was a stand-up guy as far as I was concerned. You and I aren’t… anything to each other. Are we?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

“Look, I’m sorry.” He shrugged, awkward. Avoided Ben’s eyes. “I’m sorry. This-- this thing with us, Paul was never a part of that and I never held it against him, that you… I liked Paul.”

“So did I.”

“You should have taken him to Allentown.”

“No. He deserved better than to go through that.”

O’Brian did smile, at that. “Fair enough.”

“Or maybe he didn’t. I… I-- He was-- God, I mean, I loved him. I can’t sleep anymore, he’s not there, and I close my eyes and I see… I see the way it happened, and sometimes I see all the ways it could have, and didn’t.”

They drifted out into the hallway, the eggshell walls, the mauve linoleum reflecting soft light, indistinct shadow. The cloying floral smell remained, even outside the room. Even when you couldn’t see the flowers, you couldn’t forget you were in a funeral home. 

They’d put a casket in the room, for the memorial service, even though he wasn’t in it. Closed, because people knew, that he’d been blown to bits. Helped some of them to think there was something to say goodbye to, Ben thought. Paul’s family, old friends, people Ben hadn’t gotten to know before… and the people they both knew from work. 

And Gayle. 

She’d also wanted to express condolences, but he hadn’t been able to listen to them. Not from her.

Ben’s back hit the wall, he slid down to the floor, struck by one of those moments. The sudden bereftness that came and went and knocked him to his knees sometimes. He’d sit alone with it until he found it in himself to get back up and go out to his car. Cry there or drive home and take a shower and… cry or not cry. Lose himself in the best and worst of his memories. Or he’d sit alone until the funeral director came along and said ‘Sir, we need you to leave, you’re disturbing the other mourners’.

Only, Ed O’Brian slid down to sit beside him.

“I really-- I am sorry. Maybe we’ll never get along again, maybe it’s gone too far and we’ve gotten too… bitter, angry, mean. What have you. But Paul…”

“You liked Paul.”

“Paul never gave me a reason not to. He was a talented guy. Funny. Yeah, I liked Paul.”

“He fucked someone else.” Ben blurted it out, didn’t mean to.

“Oh.”

“I mean-- I don’t know how long ago, but. Not long enough. He felt bad, I was angry, we… we were working through it, but who has time for couples’ therapy? I don’t think either of us could have. We had enough, working through all the other shit, more on top of that? But I thought he understood what we were and he… he broke my heart. And now he’s gone and we never got to really fix it. We were going to, we were going to… but I was still angry, when he died. I thought he knew, that we were serious, that I was in love with him, that there wasn’t anybody else, and he broke my heart.”

“You really are an asshole, you know that?” O’Brian sighed, pushing himself back up to his feet. “You’re a stupid asshole.”

“ _I’m_ an asshole?”

“Yeah, Ben. You are.”

He watched O’Brian go. 

A stupid asshole… what, for staying with someone who’d cheat on him? Or for getting mad in the first place when stable relationships weren’t something they saw much of, in the world they lived in?

He’s still having the nightmares about Paul, still trying to deal with his grief, guilt, betrayal, the next time he sees Ed, in Uzbekistan. Still dealing with the fallout of all things Paul, but… admittedly not so far up his own ass. 

Ed is still an asshole… but then so is Ben. 

Ed is snippy, makes comments about his integrity, and yes, he rises to the bait, he jabs back, they come close to taking swings at each other.

Well, maybe not very close. Both too old for that, now, perhaps. Closer than he likes, on reflection.

He had been a stupid asshole. Crying to Ed of all people because Paul had broken his heart, but it hadn’t occurred to him in the moment that he ever had the power to do so much. Yes, to hurt his pride, to upset him, maybe make him regret some of what they’d shared on vulnerable nights, but break his heart?

They have enough history together, over a quarter of a century. 

He’s not over Paul, he doesn’t know if he ever will be, but he thinks it’s worth trying to make some kind of peace with Ed, peace he should have made long ago. 

Ben broke Ed’s heart once, he really did. He’d had all these rules, he’d thought they shared them, but had they always just been the price of admission? Ask Ed today and he’d say Ben was never worth it, but so what? They meant something to each other that he was too chickenshit to admit, he’d made up rules about when he could sleep with men and when he could sleep with someone who worked for a rival paper, and broke them as much as he kept them, and… and things might have been very different, if he had allowed himself to think about loving Ed, when they were young. 

He can’t regret that they ended, because he can’t regret Paul. Warts and all, he can’t regret that, they had needed each other and they had loved each other. But had Ed been so different, once? He can’t really believe there’s hope for them, and he’s not ready to try, not for a relationship, one Ed would quite rightly tell him off for suggesting after everything. They could make up for the stupid fights, the unnecessary animosity. They’ve known each other too long and, yes, too well, not to try to be friends.

Not that he has any idea how, but life’s too short, life is too short to be enemies with a man who knows so much of his life. If Ed is willing to apologize for a couple of things, Ben’s willing to apologize for the rest. Shake hands and play fair. No jokes, no jabs, no revealing of secrets just to hurt each other.

At the very least, he can offer his own long-overdue apology. He has it all planned out-- he’ll give Ed a little longer to be sore at him, lick his wounds after their near-dust up. Work makes things tense, but after… after they each have the chance to log the big one, he’ll offer to buy him a drink back at the hotel before they move onto the next story. He’ll man up, he’ll say yes, he’s a stupid asshole. He’ll wish Ed well and mean it, and when the next war rolls around, he figures they’ll see where they stand.

He doesn’t get the chance to make that apology, because they’re on their way to that big story when they get stopped, separated at gunpoint. There’s no time in the moment to say he’s sorry, to say anything. To say he wishes he’d let himself consider their relationship, consider Ed, a little more than he had, to say he’s grateful for the nights Ed kept him sane, that he appreciates that he and Paul never had any bad blood over him, to say anything about the place they’ve held, for better or for worse, in each other’s lives.

There’s too much he couldn’t say even if they were allowed the time. He gets the chance to touch his arm, to meet his eyes, to try and express with that alone that in this moment he’s thinking of Ed as a friend.

When they put a bag over his head and take him and Nora out, away from the others, he’s sure he isn’t coming back alive. 

When they come back alive, it’s to see the blood soaked into the dirt. For the second time in his life, to feel his heart leave him.

It’s too late.


End file.
